


Kingdom

by Dev0id



Category: Antisepticeye - Fandom, Darkiplier - Fandom, jacksepticeye, markiplier - Fandom
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2018-12-22 12:22:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11967312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dev0id/pseuds/Dev0id
Summary: Jack is fighting a losing battle and has become a cog in the Devil's machine.





	1. Lilliputian

Jack sat. His office chair tilted back with his deflated posture; the fresh highball in front of him was almost mocking him. He sighed and moved a slender hand toward the glass, something about the beads of condensation rolling down its smooth outer surface brought to mind a provocative memory the details of which were really quite arbitrary. His real name was Sean McLoughlin, but he had made his fortune under his nom du guerre, as it were: Jack. 

He turned the glass and watched as the sun created jewel-bright patterns of light in the aged liquor. Two, five, ten times he turned the glass until the sound of a familiar voice broke his concentration; this offered Jack mercy from the onslaught of nostalgia afforded by the deep browns and brilliant amber tones that emblazoned his drink.

He sat up and addressed his visitor with a professional smile until he realized it was his man-at-arms, Hammer. This guy got a real smile out of him. Hammer was a sharp one. He was not named what he was named because he was massive or had superhuman strength, no. On the contrary it was brains before brawn because this man could hammer home lucrative deals. In his arms there were stacks of paper atop stacks of files. He set them all down at once, and like that Jack’s smile was gone.

“I wish I had reason for you to smile, friend.”

Jack’s jaw dropped. “Just what the fuck is this bullshit?” His face became a bit mottled at the three foot high pile of utter crap before him. He looked over it (as over it as he could look, anyway) at the other man.

“This,” Hammer paused to put a stick of gum in his mouth, “Is the Bastard Sword account.”

“What about it?” Jack pressed.

Hammer grinned a sharky grin Jack’s way. “What about it is this, Jackaboy: do you remember their secretary?”

Jack’s eyes popped open wide and he sunk down behind the pile. “Aye.” He mumbled. Every time he thought of that girl, he shivered, the scene coming to mind of Who framed Roger Rabbit during which Bob Hoskins’ character was watching who he thought was Jessica Rabbit move in the shadows of her dimly lit apartment, but when the door opened to his known company it was the grotesque anti-Jessica, Nina Hyena, charging toward him, her lips kissing wildly toward him yards ahead of herself.

To paraphrase Max Cannon’s Red Meat title: It wasn’t just awful, it was god-awful. Hammer chuckled dryly and popped his gum. He straightened his tie and continued. “Lucky for you she’s left the firm, or I’d have set your Lilliputian ass up on a hot date.”

“ _Lilliputian_?!” Jack grimaced.

“You know she’d’ve gone for it. Anyway they’ve got this younger guy there now, and this is where that stack of crap comes in. He will be coming in to go over this with you at 6:30 today.” Before Jack could respond, Hammer was already fighting fits of giggles as the young Irishman blanched.

“Did _you_ do this to me? What am I asking this for? Of course you did. Well this is just horse shit.” _So much for my_ _session..._ _I really needed this one..._ He thought. A surly look crept onto his face and he made direct and icy eye contact with Hammer. “You are so lucky that you refrained from initialing clause 13. So lucky… And I thought I told you a long time ago not t’call me Jackaboy!”

Hammer shoved his hands into his pockets and chuckled as he exited Jack’s office. Emi, Jack’s curly-haired, sweet-faced assistant, looked through the window, rolling her bright green eyes…

 

...Some time had passed, and as Jack looked up from trying to collate the tower of power, he noticed that Emi suddenly looked to the elevator entry to the firm; a dark-haired young man approached the desk. He smiled and announced himself, his dancing brown eyes seeming a touch nervous. He saw Emi smile back and send him through the doors. Jack’s heart sank. How could this be?

The man’s jaw fell open at the sight of Jack.

“Mark,” He chewed nervously at the inside of his cheek. A habit that would leave the inside of his mouth with a plethora of scars circa his childhood. He cleared his throat. "W-would--" 

Mark interrupted sharply. “Look. I don’t know what the hell kind of joke my boss thinks this is. I just want to get this done and go home.”

_Ouch…_ Jack thought. “Make yourself at home. May I offer you a drink?” He was answered with the blank-faced lifting and shaking of a large water bottle. Mark loosened his tie and undid his top button, reading the first page of his first packet. It was no lie, he was determined to get through this work. Something didn’t sit right with either of them in regards to this work. This is work that people at least Jack himself has hired for such a purpose.

He was unsure about Mark’s tenure as such, but even then it seemed like this was work that definitely had nothing to do with Mark’s job description. He was having a hard enough time with this very chilly presence across the room. _I feel like shit… I hope I can res-reschedule…Did my thoughts just stutter?_ Jack frowned. _Can thoughts do that?_

Hours later, they had only two packets each to do. Mark was noticeably irritated, tired-- possibly more hangry than actually upset with Jack. After all, the man seemed just as shocked by Mark’s presence as Mark was by Jack’s. The green-haired man flipped idly through his last packet. He came to a center page with a red sticky tab he hadn’t noticed before. You’d think one in the entire stack would stick out quite abruptly, but this was apparently not so, and it became unimportant when the handwritten script the tab was indicating processed through Jack’s busy mind.

 

_**[Addendum to form C-324: Mark Fischbach’s Clause 13 approval has been processed. Deadline...]** _

 

His heart skipped a beat. The date was today. Those punic, greedy bastards! “ _Shit!_ ” He gasped and he pushed his chair back from the desk, from the paper, as though it had a large spider on it. _God damn it Mark is smarter than this-- why did he initial it? Why??_ Jack’s heartbeat stung beneath his flesh as the deed before him became ever more real.

Mark looked up from his work passively and Jack played it off as though he had merely spilled his drink. “I’m gonna take a break, I’ll be back in 15 minutes. Would you point me toward your bathrooms?” Mark asked.

Jack had his head bowed, letting what he was going to have to do sink in and he pointed without lifting his eyes, pretending to be reading his own packet while wiping at his jacket to remove those invisible droplets of whiskey. He quietly pressed a button to light the hall a bit for him, as even the cleaning service had already come and gone. They were the only two on the floor. Mark chuffed and left for the restroom. Jack poured a double and belted it back. He followed that up with another and put the shot glass away, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

He frowned and picked up his desk phone as it rang. It could only be one person at this hour. “Hammer what the fuck are you trying to pull?” He asked in a hushed growl.

“It’s almost midnight, Lucky Charms--”

“ _Lucky fucking Charms?!--”_ Jack hissed. For a split-second the anger made his chest feel like he had been pelted with thumbtacks.

“She is waiting for him. If you refuse she will accommodate _you_. There’s always room for one more where he is going. Jack, just get this done and you will never hear from us again… unless we direly need your _expertise_.” _**Click.**_

A thick onset of nausea came over Jack just enough to leave a sheen of sweat along his hairline and across his upper lip. He set the receiver down in a daze and forced movement into himself toward the task at hand.

Sliding his hand across his desk to just the inside of the far left corner he triggered a ‘press-in-to-open’ mechanism which opened up a hidden compartment, a large drawer that seamlessly blended into the side of the blocky, modern-art style desk. Inside was a large manila envelope bearing a bloody red wax seal, a small leather-bound book, a black candle, a white candle, a red candle, and some matches.

Jack broke the seal on the envelope with a dry snap and the room grew instantly cold. He pulled from it an old, yellowed piece of paper which was folded into four parts. He unfolded the paper carefully to reveal that it bore an ancient sigil. He put the packet with the handwritten addendum in the now empty compartment and upon coming into contact with the seemingly normal varnish within, the paper dissolved completely. The room seemed to quiver momentarily at this. He worked on unfazed, knowing he could easily blame California for the jittering of his surroundings.

Signed, sealed, delivered.

He stuffed the book into his pocket and set the sigilized paper out onto the floor. He grit his teeth as he rushed to light the candles. Jack never understood why something so powerful required such petty nuances but they were somehow mandatory. He kept looking out the window into the dimly lit reception area just in case Mark had decided to cut break time short. No such luck. The candles were lit and the room was dark. He turned off the lights in the hallway and opened the old leather book.

He had done this so many times that he no longer needed to rely on the book. He had committed the rite to memory… so many times, and this would be his last. You see, falling in with the wrong people can mean many things. Most of them bad. In Jack’s case, he was put under forcible ‘protective payment’ and then turned to yet another group of the wrong people in sight of a solution to the first group, somehow practically running into Satan himself. It was the birth of a vicious cycle and the beginning of Jack’s service to the sinister. It became as well a thing that Jack was quite good at, but never once in his most violent of fever dreams did he think he would be culling someone he once loved to the blood pool…

His heart began to ache at the thought of it. “How the fuck was it ever love at all if it was taken so badly?” He asked nobody aloud. It all felt fresh again, the old wounds de-scabbed and bleeding. Tears practically asserted themselves in his eyes.

Mark stepped back inside the building, suddenly very aware of the inky darkness before him. He could make out the light of three candles in the distance. “What the fuck?” He growled under his breath. If memory served him, he recalled that there was a wide, clear path between himself and the office, so he knew he could simply follow the light and reach the office without tumbling over a desk, but something was definitely not right about this. At the very least it was rude 

Jack saw the light come in from the balcony door and made his starting rite quick: **  
**

 

_**Léiríonn frog cinnirí daonna** _

_**Laistigh dá bhéal** _

_**Páirceanna gealaithe** _

_**Bán, crainn ualaithe sneachta -** _

_**A aghaidh, ghabh an Gealach;** _

_**Tagann a súile a fhios ag an Linn,** _

 

_**Glac an staighre bíseach chuig an seomra Gorm...** _

 

Mark looked at the screen on his phone just as the last word of Jack’s rite set the candles to blaze high and hot for a mere few seconds.

 “Jack, it’s almost midnight, so I am taking the last two packets home and faxing them in.” Mark called into the darkness. “What happened to the lights, man?” He asked, a touch more flustered. He pocketed his phone and headed further to the darkness. The time was slipping ever closer to midnight as Mark neared the room. He pushed open the doors, catching the tail end of the otherworldly Irish rite. He had only ever heard Jack say things like ‘I love you’ in this language. The words he heard just then were expressly darker, clear even beyond his lack of comprehension of the language. Jack’s attention snapped up from the book. He sat it face-up on the sigil and stood to face the angry and confused other man.

“What is this?” Mark was so freaked out he almost chuckled but was still too uncomfortable with Jack to let it form completely. “I didn’t realize that you were still angry.”

“I would try to explain but you may not decide to listen. You know, like you never did. Besides, I can’t be the only one who’s still angry.”

“Try me.” He replied. Jack was surprised but distrusting of the calm which nigh-on promised the coming storm.

“Where do I start?” His frown deepening, the tears now brimming and readying to spill as he saw the minute hand on the wall-mounted clock edge ever closer to midnight. He recoiled a little as Mark cautiously approached, taking care not to disturb the candles. Slowly, Mark raised his hands to straighten the collar of Jack’s jacket. Just like the sticky tab in the paperwork, there was another cog in the mechanism that simply appeared at the whim of his masters in the form of a t-shaped tailor’s needle sticking bluntly out of the underside of the collar itself.

“Ow! Shhhhit…” the needle slid effortlessly, deeply beneath one of his fingernails and began to draw a surprising amount of blood. The damage was more like splintered wood, or a barbed hook than a smooth hemming needle.

Mark recoiled and before he knew it, the blood beaded up and dropped away from his finger and to the book on the floor. It sizzled and bubbled and was seemingly drank in, savored by the book.

“You could have done anything else but try to be gentle with me after how it all ended, Mark and now it is _futile_!”

Mark’s face twisted further into confusion. “Look, I know I took your expressions toward me very badly-- I don’t understand, though, Jack. I don’t get any of this.” he gestured toward the ritual setup. Jack’s face lost all semblance of living color as he noticed Hammer standing in the dark outside his doors.

Any thoughts of changing his mind or backing out of this were put to rest. It was being seen to that Hell would have Mark.

He sniffed, brushing the tears from his eyes, “you should have been more careful to read the fine print.” Blackness leeched into his sclerae from the outside corners in, devouring into the black even the bright blue of his irises. A gaping, bloodless wound unzipped itself across Jack’s throat.

“ _Jack?!_ Jack I swear I don’t fucking understand! Oh Jesus your throat...”

Mark made an attempt to leave the office, trying to reconcile in his mind that this was nothing like what he was seeing but he met Hammer’s laughing resistance at the doors and found he was trapped. “What can I do to rectify this?” He turned to once more face Jack. Jack simply shook his head ‘no’ and took a ragged, wheezing breath.

His voice was layered with another deeper voice, as well as a disturbing whispering caused by the depths of the wound in the man’s throat. “There is nothing you can do...”

“B-but...”

**_  
“_ _AVE SATANA!”_   **Jack began. His voice filled every corner of the room.

 

“ _ **Hail, Satan,**_

_**Rí na Ifreann,** _

_**Rialaitheoir na Cruinne,** _

_**Dia an Domhain seo!”** _

 

“Satan?!” Mark looked out the doors to see Hammer grinning. Bile seemed to drip from between the man’s perfect teeth and down his chin, it was as though he was hungry for this very moment. He looked back to Jack and took note that he could see his breath, the room was colder than ever before, but Jack seemed to sweat more with every word.

  
_**“**_ _ **Dia a thugann cuireadh**_

_**dúinn a bheith mar dhia!** _

_**Muse ar ár sibhialtachta,** _

_**Dread Namhaid ar a dia tyrantach Iompróir an Solas fíor!** _

 

_**Dia ár bhfeoil,** _

_**Dia ár n-intinn,** _

_**Dia ár n-uachtair is fearr!”** _

 

Mark was terrified and visibly angry at this juncture and began to put some space between himself and the Irishman. He scrambled backwards into the open space in the room, neither seeing nor feeling the tiles begin to crack beneath his feet. Little plumes of soot began to seek the air through the cracks.

**  
“ _Tóg an tairiscint seo Táim ag tnúth leat i mo ghníomh deiridh de sheirbhís!”_**

 

“Jack! Help me to understand!” Mark plead. “I wanna understand!”

Jack repeated the last line of the rite, this time in English: “Take this offering that I cull to thee in my final act of servitude. Do you understand me now?”

It was at this that Mark headed for the doors once more, being met instead with Hammer’s imbued inhuman strength. Hammer dragged him back to the center of the now decaying floor where he stood a moment ago.

“Finish up, Jackaboy or I will be forced to help you.”

Jack fell to his knees, he felt ripped to pieces as the broken-glass-sharp words practically forced themselves out: _**“Rege Satana."**_  

“N-n--” Was all Mark could get out before the floor collapsed in beneath him. As he looked down he expected to see the office floor below them, but instead his eyes took in flames, smoke, embers, and jagged rock. He could hear the agonized crying, the shrieking of lost, tortured souls and the crackling of the eternal fire. He felt such heat through the soles of his shoes and it occurred to him that he should have fallen into the gaping hole already, but he was being suspended over it by Hammer who stood on the edge, dangling Mark at arm’s length by the back of his shirt. _“Don’t let him do this, Jack...”_ Mark beseeched.

Jack wouldn’t lift his eyes to either of them. He couldn’t. He remained forehead to the floor, the tip of his nose just in the center of a puddle of black, viscous tears.

Hammer said nothing more. He let go of Mark and listened intently as the young man screamed on the way down. Jack crawled toward the edge and looked over, sickened by a burst of sulfurous gas. Jack dry-heaved, expressing only blood-streaked drool. His stomach held but a small amount of liquid and that was already allocated to different areas of his body as it happens. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket and stood up to face Hammer, his back exposed to the pit.

“I would be an idiot if I thought it wasn’t already too late to change my mind.” He could feel, at certain intervals, flames licking at his heels and the back of his legs.

“You’re still an idiot, though, Jack. Much more than that you are an absolute dunce. _That_ clause on _that_ paperwork exists only at  this firm. His firm, the firms of all the others? They were all oblivious and ready to accept any excuse that would explain away the roster of absentees-- and _you took it all for granted_ as being some ‘united bureaucracy’ in the grand scheme of it all.”

Horror ripped upward along Jack’s spine. As he reconciled Hammer’s words, the opening behind him began to silently pull in at the edges toward the center, puckering and inevitably closing tight, the tiles even reassembling. “You mean to tell me that not one p-p-p-- _fuck_!” Hammer seemed to find the malfunction that was slowly taking place quite delicious. “You mean t-to tell me that not one person had actually signed their soul away?!”

“You’ve done us a great service and now I can take my leave. I will be coming back from time to time, though. Rest assured.”

Thinking that the hole was still wide open, Jack spread his arms and looked Hammer in the eyes. “There won’t be anyone to c-come back to.” He tipped backwards and hit the cold, hard tile, his head bouncing sharply off. As his world spun, Hammer leaned in and grabbed him by the face.

“The only attribute that caused you serve us well was _ignorance,_ _y_ ou little prick!” Roughly patting Jack’s cheek, Hammer began to laugh once more at Jack’s expense and left the man laying sprawled out on the ground.

~


	2. Catacombs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In order to embrace who you are to become, you must forget who you ever were...

It was colder at the bottom of the pit than all the fires would have indicated. After hitting the hard, dusty ground, he lay as still as possible and let his head swim. Jack sold him out in the most ultimate way possible.

Jack flat-out sold him.

Mark wiggled his toes, moved his feet, knees, hips, and then sat up when satisfied that nothing at least from his belt and below was broken. He palpated his own ribs, tilted his head side to side, looked left to right and when he was convinced that he lacked spinal injury, he moved to stand, noticing only when he made to put his weight on his palms as he rolled over that his left arm gave way. He cried out and pressed it close to his side to support it. He stood, finally, weaving a little at first.

“You survived the fall.” a small demonic voice spoke from nearby. Mark spun toward the voice and there he saw a tall blonde female dressed in black vinyl. She approached and Mark noticed that the sound her boot heels made against the ground sounded as though it was somehow backwards. He could see from afar that she was beautiful, but up close it became more of a grotesque beauty: he noticed that her shiny vinyl clothes were stitched into her skin, and what’s more her face seemed to be crudely stitched on as well, but with thin straps made of the same vinyl she wore. Her eyes were like Jack’s from moments before, shining black, vast like space.

She took his left hand and he winced, wanting to pull away. “It’s broken...” He said. 

“I can help you.” She straightened his arm at the elbow, the fracture was halfway up his forearm, radius and ulna having both snapped in the same spot. 

He grew ever more uncomfortable as she seemed to maintain eye contact with him, her cheeks flushing as she peeled a glove away from her free hand with her teeth. What clutched at his forearm appeared to literally be her musculo-skeletal degloved hand. He cried out again (a bit of fear mixed in with the pain) as she squeezed and he tried to pull away but in mere seconds her hand had fused to his arm, a boiling heat beginning to generate between them.

She seemed to relish his pain and discomfort like a sucking candy, her knees buckled a little as his bones began to crackle and move, knitting loudly back into their natural position, miniature fires burning in a localized area under his skin as everything healed. She licked her lips and sighed, pulling her hand away from his arm, having to leave behind a layer of flesh as she had given him a part of herself. He looked at the complete hand-print on his forearm. 

“That will disappear soon. Do not worry.” She slipped the glove back over her hand and Mark’s stomach turned as he could smell the vinyl and the flesh as it too fused together again. “My name is Marie and you are Mark.” 

Mark nodded. “It’s a stupid question, but where am I?” 

Marie tugged at the final stitch by her inner wrist and flexed and extended her fingers. She decided that to continue to talk was exhausting, and instead she spoke more succinctly to him via telepathy.

 _You are home._ She looked him up and down and made a face at his appearance which, other than being dusty and beaten up a little was pretty clean, pretty normal. _It will take some time but soon enough you will manifest into your more dominant incarnation. I always liked you better that way._

“What do you mean?”

_We have been watching you for so long. We consider you very special, for even in his own secondary being, Jack always held you in such high esteem. On the surface it would be called love. We here find that an expression of ultimate weakness._

Mark’s heart sank deep into his chest. “What does that mean for me?” 

_Only that you will strengthen beyond your wildest aspirations. Only that you will soon forget what it meant to feel love, and it will free you. It always seemed as though you never knew what to do with it anyway._

Mark was incensed. “Hey, that’s a low blow whoever you are. And fuck him for sending me here for what-- being confused to anger?! It was one thing too many on top of a shit heap of other things and he knew it. HE KNEW IT.”

She smiled at him. He found it very off-putting, but whether it was that some of her teeth were filed to a point was unclear. _The next step will be very difficult, but I am afraid it is necessary. In order to become who you truly are, a beacon of darkness, beauty constructed by the very hand of evil, you must forget who you ever were._

Marie reached out to set her fingertips gently aside his right temple, but he grabbed her hand before she could make any contact. She began to bleed through her vinyl casing and Mark reeled in shock as each droplet that hit the ground hissed and evaporated. She easily pulled away thanks to the lubrication that this provided.

“How did I hurt you? I barely touched you.”

_Only a modicum of what I ever knew before all this remains. In my waking life I was a nurse. I took care of children and the tiniest of babies whose lives depended on kind, loving touch. My career was my life and my life was my career. So now in this, my second incarnation, I heal, but I receive no healing. I touch, but I receive no contact. The consequence of contact is blood, and it is as I wish it to be. The world above was cruel enough that with any received contact expressive of any thing other than lust, anger, hatred, or violence I now and forever bleed._

“If you are allowed to remember, why do I have to forget?”

 _I am not hindered by my memories, Mark, I am only aided by them._  

Mark looked down at his own hand. The blood was gone. It seemingly dissolved back into her vinyl casing and disappeared from his own skin. She reached up once more and asserted her touch to his temples. For a brief time he could feel droplets of her rolling down his cheek. His eyes flashed white as though his brain was a hard drive and it had been wiped clean. His world went dark, and the last thing he heard was a simple, yet daunting request:

 

 _Now find me._  

_~_

Jack awoke rudely. That is to say he sprang into an upright position and then went back to his knees the second the pain in his head registered. It had already hit, but it was so otherworldly that it took a moment for his body to reconcile that it was truly pain and not something entirely worse. This in itself is kind of a paradox. The back of his shirt was bloody from the gash that he sustained. He crawled on his hands and knees to put the ritual paraphernalia away before realizing that his assistant was the reason for his consciousness. 

Emi stood back, her arms folded, trying to take the scenario for what it was, but nothing would come to her. All she knew was that Jack needed medical intervention. She retreated into the office and fetched a damp towel, pressing it gently to the back of Jack’s head. “We’re going to the hospital and then we are going to set you up in your flat.” 

Anything was better than current events so he conceded and before he knew it he was stitched up and sitting up on his couch. Emi set him up with snack foods and light beverages, pillows, remotes, his tablet and phone, and hit up the office, leaving a note on the entry doors stating that it would be closed for the rest of the week. She cleaned up his office as best she could and made sure that everything was locked up tight. Before exiting she left a note for herself to have that sulfur smell checked out, and then returned to his house where she forwarded calls and set up in his in-home office as she had done a few times before.

“Emi,” He stood in the doorway. “I appreciate what you’re doing but I will be okay on my own today. I could use being alone for a bit.”

“I’m sure you could, sir, and luckily you can be totally alone out there while I work in here. I am not leaving you actually alone after the way I found you. At least not today.” 

“Emi.” He continued.

“No, sir.” She arched an eyebrow. “O-u-t.”

Jack decided not to take the topic further and went back to his nest. He watched some TV but couldn’t find it in himself to eat. The guilt was filling enough. It had never been like Jack before to simply wallow in it. He picked up his phone.

 

09:30: Emi, I think I may be going away for a while. I need to talk with you about this.

 

09:33: Sorry for the delay, Sir. Maybe a hiatus would do you some good. Hammer can step in for you, I’m sure…

 

Jack frowned at this but it _was_ the truth. The invitation to take over alone would probably tighten the man’s trousers. He set his phone back down.

 

09:35: Sir?

09:37: Sir, are you okay?

09:39:...Did you not want Hammer to take over in your absence?

09:41:...Sir?

 

It might have been that Jack got up to use the toilet, but Emi would have heard his socked feet shuffling over the floor. Something raised the hair on the back of Emi’s neck; It was enough to encourage getting up from her own stack of crap in order to make damn good and sure he hadn’t fallen asleep. 

As she rounded the corner from his office she could instantly see him. He was tapping a fingertip against his lower lip in thought. He stared deep into the cracks between the hardwood paneling on the floor. “Emily, I owe you an explanation over something...” said Jack without looking her way. She stopped cold. She knew at the word ‘Emily’ that this would be painfully serious. 

“Sir-”

“Please, Emi. Call me Jack.” He knitted his brow a little. “I need a friend right now and not an employee where I’ll be going.” 

“Wha--” Emi bristled, this all sounded way too much like a permanent goodbye. “Jack, if it is too personal you don’t have to feel obligated to let me know...” 

“To be blunt, it was unrequited love. So unrequited, as a matter of fact, that the confusion alone caused a shit-storm to roll over and leave my friendship with the other person involved an absolute wreckage.” To talk about it hurt so bad, and on top of the aching in his head this caused a greasy nauseous feeling to slither up and down the lining of his stomach. He clutched at it a little. “We argued so fucking hard over the three _simple_ little words I said to him.” 

 _Mark._ Emi thought. Her cheeks turned a bit red but otherwise, she managed to hold back how much this actually upset her for Jack.

“We argued so hard that something _very_ bad happened to the two of us. There was no way I could have come in as I was, and he-- well he flat out d-disappeared.” His eyes stung but he wasn’t about to cry. Instead that old familiar numbness began to settle in. His mouth stopped watering like he was getting ready to throw up; the nausea stopped just as quick as the feelings did. 

“I think we should stop here so you can get some rest.” Emi was uneasy. She could see something oily and sadistic start creeping into him. 

“No, Emi. This needs to be said because it’s likely my only chance left to say it.” 

“Jack, you’re scaring the hell out of me!” Emi complained.

Jack frowned; he felt so desperate to be heard. He watched her pace a little in front of him, but gave her a moment to absorb it all. 

“Are you concerned that people may ask questions? Because if that’s it, it’s what Hammer will be there to remedy.” She finally posed. 

“Look, FUCK Hammer, all right? Focus, because this is going to be really hard to swallow, but I need you to _understand me._ ” His voice changed and she jumped. She took a few steps back. “I’m so sorry, Emi, I am trying to make this quick for obvious reasons. I have been indebted to some terrible people and they taught me a… trade. This trade would help me work off my debt, but as a s-s-STUPID result I was required to do unforgivable things.” The word ‘unforgivable’ rippled from him in a shudder.

Emi remained silent, transfixed on the more and more obvious synthesis taking place before her. She gave him a nod to encourage him to continue. Her heart thudded against her chest wall. 

“Sh-shit. I’m just going to say it. Emily, I have been given access to a portal here that opens into a portion of the Netherworld. A portion of hell, Emi. Thanks to a clause in the fine print, I have been practically gifting people in their entirety to a demon. Mark was my last ‘gift’, and I am afraid I have doomed him to come face to face with the very thing he disappeared to conquer. I was contractually obligated to keep this all from you--” Jack caught a glimpse of the outline of a man standing in the shadows behind Emi. His throat went dry. “S-so what I want you to do right now is run.” Hammer stepped into the light and inched toward her, his hand feeling under his jacket for something.

“What? No. I already told you--”

Jack’s eyes went black “RUN.” Hammer swiped at the girl and missed.

Run Emi did. She was at the back door before the word itself had been said, and in her car trying not to spin the tires as she hurried to put distance between herself and them. She began to cry once she reached the safety of the highway which was nearly empty this time of day. If what Jack had said was not a side effect of his pain medication or the head injury itself, it was then a given that no stretch of distance could actually be deemed as safe. 

Back inside Jack’s house, there was a game taking place: cat and mouse. Jack fought hard to keep lucid, part of him pressing furiously this time to take everything away. Last time he was able to fight just hard enough. Next time surely couldn’t exist. He found himself holed up in the nearby bathroom, listing his options. The silence beyond the door was apropos; he knew Hammer could move undetected by the senses. _Look at you. You can’t even assert boundaries with your_ _own_ _lackey!_

“Oh fuck you.” He replied seemingly to nobody.

 _~_  

Slowly, surely “Mark” awoke. He stood up and buttoned his shirt. He fingered through his hair and smoothed the ash and dirt away from his slacks and even dusted the same debris from his shoes. His focus helped him cap the newfound wellspring of rage that was bubbling so fiercely inside that he would occasionally need to swallow back the acid rising in his throat. 

He passed the souls of people he used to know. Eye contact, just brief, happened with a lone redhead girl from his past. He shifted his gaze just slightly over her shoulder and straightened his tie. Despite being on a pike she was lucid and furious that he had actually checked his reflection in the glass she was trapped behind. She began to shriek and try uselessly to lunge and scratch at him. 

Other faces from his increasingly slipping past stood impaled, some chained so tightly their extremities were swollen, painful and discolored. Some were waist-high in bloody swamp water which caused them to be infested by insects, or enduring some other unspeakable punishment, all stood behind glass, all looked on as he moved past without interest, and all condemned him with ire for simply falling more and more comfortably into a confident stride. 

His thoughts ranged from boredom to bitter amusement that his ‘Kingdom’ as he imagined it, would have been renovated so morbidly for his return. This, of course, was pure narcissistic garbage, as he would find out soon who the real king was. The glass was so thick between himself and his ‘art’, engineered so that they would scream or weep in agony and he would still hear, but just barely. Ambiance, really. 

He weaved through his surroundings almost effortlessly and rounded the corner on a room lit with what must have been a hundred candles. “Funny.” He said as yet another window took his notice. This time it was his disdained counterpart stood suspended upright, strung up like a puppet by various connective cables, sleeping deeply. Dark felt such profound anger rise and smashed his fist against the glass. A tiny hairline crack began in the center of the pane “You look like I _ALWAYS FELT_.” He took note of his unpunished fist, and of the unbroken glass and chuckled to himself aloud.

_You have reached the halfway point._

“Ah, yes. Thank you, Marie.” He fingered through his hair again and tried to stand a little straighter though his posture was perfect. “Please forgive my outburst. Strange, isn’t it, that such anger at ‘myself’ would be considered narcissistic rage in the waking world. Symptomatic of deeper issues...”

 _Be forewarned that the second half will not be nearly as negligible, and that this is all so much more than just symptomatic._ Marie laughed softly.

 

His mouth went dry.

_~_

The walls of the bathroom began to bulge slightly inward as though they wished to close in on our Jack. He moved carefully toward the door and turned the knob as quietly as he could. _You’re fuckin’ stupid._ The inner voice continued. _It’s_ _crazy how useless you are under a little bit of pressure._

“Shut your talk hole!” He hissed aloud. This piqued Hammer’s attention and he put plenty of space between himself and the door. He was imbued with power beyond the wildest dreams of most, but his flesh was still vulnerable like any other schmuck out there. He reached into the left hand side of his suit coat and made doubly sure his holster was not only still full but unclipped.

Jack let the door swing open. He appeared to be suffering a high-grade fever, his cheeks bright red, his hair matted to his forehead by sweat. His eyes remained pools of black nothing, making the red that much redder.

“You broke the rules, Jack.”

Hammer stiffened up and took his piece out of the side holster. He loaded the chamber and aimed. Jack knew this would all happen very quickly, but the threat of pain made him hesitate. He felt thick rage pulsing through his veins quite suddenly, his heart beating so hard it threatened to burst through his chest wall.

 _Get ready Jack,_ _you useless sack of shit._

He could hold back no longer and slowly, like every time he read those words, his throat opened dryly from the right to the left. His consciousness began to fail him. He gagged on the sharp burst of air coming in through the new hole.

There was abruptly no more fight...

 

 _MOVE OVER,_ _I AM SICK OF WAITING_ _._

 

...and Anti was free again.

Anti bared his teeth at Hammer. “It’s been a while.” He spoke, a whisper accompanying the already chortling, unhinged voice.

“It’s barely been two days.” Hammer replied unmoved.

 "You got what you want, don’t ya? Why haven’t you done your worst yet?” Anti mocked him. He bared down on the other man, cackling, eventually coming forehead-to-barrel with Hammer’s gun. He wrapped his fingers around the barrel to hold it in place. “How about you stop wasting my time and punish me like a man?” He cajoled. 

Hammer simply pulled the trigger. Anti laughed (in shock, funny enough) and took a few clumsy steps back; blood trickled down between his eyes. Smoke curled lazily skyward from the bullet hole, and Anti fell backward into the bathroom, gurgling, giggling, and wheezing. The floor began to open up beneath him. Before too long he could feel himself falling. He hit the ground, rolled, and skidded to a stop. Had he been alive any longer, his body would have crumbled into mush.

Even from halfway through the maze, Dark felt the other man hit the ground. The various firelight around him blazed high and hot, licking the ceilings when before it had been like any other candle flame. Unhinged cackling laughter rippled through the catacombs.

 _Perhaps forward motion is ideal._ Marie suggested. Did she sound nervous?

~


	3. Illusion?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anti pursues Dark. Hammer is on a mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not own rights, lyrics, or music to Devin Townsend's "Kingdom".  
> Constructive feedback welcome.

Emi blinked the tears from her vision as best she could. Her stomach burned; her mind spun as she called her partner via hands-free. There was no answer. Immediately an icy finger of fear traced up her spine, setting her nerves off.

“Angel. Please pick up, baby, this is so important… Angel, _please_ … call me back as soon as you get this. Something is happening right now that is really hard to believe. I feel like I am losing my mind. Call me back!”

She disconnected the call and focused on the drive. She wanted to go home to Angel and get all the things they could hold so that they could hide. They could protect each other. Her lower lip trembled at the thought, however, that there may be nothing strong enough to truly protect anyone.

Little did Emi know, Angel heard the message loud and clear. She stood silently in the kitchen watching an unknown vehicle pull into their drive on their CCTV setup. She saw a tall, almost cartoonishly muscular man in a tailored suit behind the wheel. He looked around before getting out, but when he did, his jacket fell open a little and Angel immediately noticed the automatic handgun and holster beneath. Her phone vibrated in her hand and she looked down at the voicemail-to-text that was coming in across the screen.

**10:30** : I will meet up with you as soon as I’ve dealt with Hammer. Dunno what he wants but he’s here.

Emi had stopped for gas at a busy station and as she read the text, her face lost all color.

“No!” She texted. “Don’t deal with him, just hide!”

Angel wouldn’t see this text. She turned off the ringer and set her phone down maneuvering through the house in a way that Hammer wouldn’t see that anyone was home. She didn’t know what that piece was for, but she intended on not only finding out, but taking it away if she had to. Emily and Angel had met because of Jack, Angel having once been Jack’s bodyguard.

Angel’s training was self-sought; this was an individual of no small motivation and talent for the use of a wide variety of weaponry and fighting styles. She had just completed her red belt in an art that had long since been made illegal due to the inclusion of the manipulation of various and dangerous pressure points and soft spots.

Hapkido was a very straightforward discipline.

Angel could feel the static in the air as Hammer made his way around the periphery of her house. He was getting to know the place from the outside in. She walked calmly to their office and accessed a safe, pulling from it a throwing blade in an ankle holster, and a small but powerful silver pistol. This went in the belt, safety off. Her steely gray eyes focused on another set of CCTV monitors in the office, noticing that Hammer had found his way into the detached garage.

He took his time, taking mental pictures of the layout of things, of the locations of items that could be useful should his piece jam.

“Shit.” She snarled under her breath and made her move back to the kitchen. Though the garage was not attached to the house there was a narrow walkway between the two structures, and two doors that faced each other for easy access. This meant that Hammer would likely leave through the door via which he entered the garage and simply walk three feet ahead and ooze his way under the outside/kitchen door. She stood so that the island counter was between herself and him. She returned the phone to her pocket, seeing Emi’s last text and ducked behind the counter.

As Angel watched, she remembered the day that Jack had introduced Hammer to both herself and Emily. Angel had put in her notice not because she didn’t wish to protect Jack any longer, but because she was being called away for an important family issue and had no idea at the time of how lengthy the whole process would turn out to be.

Something seemed off about the large man, and it wasn’t any one of various things like his untimely chuckling, his constant gum-chewing, or the crop of naturally lightning-white hair on his head that he kept styled tightly into a pompadour. The closer she got to his physical person, the more edgy she felt. Like that feeling one gets when they realize only just after the fact that they have dodged a major bullet. The farther away she got from him, the more she felt this almost delirious relief like a dozen large butterflies dancing in her stomach and a runner’s high all at once.

Hammer was there to protect Jack thanks to trouble that had brewed earlier on, but Angel never knew that he would dip a tentacle into Jack’s business finances and begin to control Jack’s every move, sometimes even trickling into Jack’s personal life. Angel knew nothing of the earlier meeting with Mark, or the manipulation of the dimensions, or even anything about what had her beloved feeling so terrified and desperate to hide but one thing was crystal clear: Hammer was on the hunt, and Emi was the target.

It was also fairly obvious that Angel was being designated as collateral damage of sorts, Hammer seemed to care very little that Emi’s car was nowhere near the drive or the residence, so the conclusion seemed natural that his intent was to wipe the earth of any evidence of his undertaking, including anyone that might miss Emi.

Angel stood at a mere 5’2”, and due to her consumption of so many physical disciplines, boasted a solid 180 lbs of muscle. She appeared to resemble a serious-faced young man more than a woman, and was a complement to Emi’s tiny cuteness. She reached up and ran a hand through her short dark ash blond hair.

She had once gone off on a solo trek to various places in the world that held the origins of her family heritage, one of them being Ireland. This is where she met Jack. It was one of the random times he dealt with being in a pub because there was a festival of some sort going on and his friends just would not take ‘fuck off’ for an answer. Angel was a huge fan of a proper pint of dark beer and had decided after hours of adoring the sights to pop into this pub and grab a bar stool. Funny enough, their friendship began over his amusement with how closely she observed the barkeep pulling said proper pint, and the rest was history.

~

Dark took heed of Marie’s suggestion and he took his leave through the opening across from him into the second half. As he rounded a turn and tried to pick up speed, he slammed into something. He backed up and blinked in a daze. Looking up, he noticed he had run headlong into a priest, but when he took a better look he noticed that the eye sockets of the old man were empty, the eyelids sewn over, sunken into them, and that the cross on the rosary around his neck hung upside-down.

He shook his bible in Dark’s face and proselytized in ancient tongues. A mere patch of light shined on the man’s dry, rough old face, stubble and scarring running along his flesh. He backed further away and gave the man a wide berth as he moved on to continue. His ears suddenly registered another ripple of insane laughter. He clenched his jaw at this. It was a combination of the threat of the oncoming madman and of the one nearby that triggered his fight or flight response. He nearly ripped himself in two wanting to fight but choosing to flight and although his counterpart was more than dispatched it was as though he was of two minds and they disagreed profoundly.

He noticed the absence of a heartbeat. Even at his abject frustration with being stuck inside an idiot, he always felt his heart beat, and make no mistake it was _his._ He grit his teeth a little at the thought. It took some doing but he pulled himself away from the quagmire and forced his way forward. Before he could go any farther than two city blocks, a soft, manicured hand grabbed him. The girl came out of nowhere like the priest.

“Oh christ how I’ve missed you...” She whispered into his ear. He could feel her whole, warm body pressed against his, her hair tickling his neck as she leaned in but he could not see her. He could only feel her. In his mind’s eye he could see all of her but her face. _For the love of god I can smell her perfume… it is so familiar._ He thought. She was the culmination of what he had always idealized in a woman. The rising feelings were nauseating, infuriating. He could feel her touching him but he could not by any means reach out and touch her.

He tried to pull away when he felt her fingertips brush against his zipper, he tried to reach out for someone to push away when he felt her teeth tug lightly on his earlobe. She hung her full weight from his shoulders, threatening to drag him to the ground with her. Fear was giving way to terror as he clawed wildly at the empty space around him to try to dislodge her somehow.

The cackling was getting closer. He put both of his hands up to his head, beginning to come unglued. He could feel the ground tremble just slightly. He saw sediment begin to drift toward the ground from the vibrations. “I AM IN CONTROL!” He demanded. He pushed forward to try and walk out of her presence and as he refused her, her amorous behavior devolved into violence. Her nails seemed to sharpen and they tore at his clothing, trying desperately to keep him close.

“ _You can’t reject_ _ME_!” She shrieked.

He finally escaped the gelatinous nature of her energy and broke into a run. His sides stung where her nails left long, angry scratches.The corridor he passed through led to another cavern of sorts, except something wasn’t right. He took a few more steps in and looked at all the faces judging him behind the windows, even those who had been purged of their sight glared his way through empty sockets. Dark stomped into the candle-lit room and saw that there was an addendum to Mark’s display, in the form of pale, slender Jack.

He stood close, his head settled on Mark’s shoulder, eyes closed, blood dripping down his forehead and over Mark’s shoulder, down his arm from the bullet wound he had sustained.His hands clutched some of the cables that suspended Mark as though he had tried to disengage them before falling into his slumber.There were even more cables winding up one of Jack’s legs like a predatory vine. They stood suspended together in time, Mark completely unaware of Jack’s affectionate stance. Doomed to oblivion as ever. “Marie?” Marie refrained from answering. “MARIE!” Dark bellowed. “Why am I back at the halfway point?! MARIE?!”

“You sure ask a lot of questions.” Someone giggled behind him.

Dark spun around. The confusion and panic was making him dizzy. “I will _not_ be ignored. I demand to know what kind of game this all is… Oh boy, it’s you.” He saw then that it was Anti seemingly having caught up.

“This isn’t some _game_.” Anti mocked. The giggling stopped and was replaced with venom tainted by disappointment. “There was never a beginning or a halfway point or an end. You are where you should be. In a never ending, living loop of everything wrong you have ever triggered Mark and everyone else around him to do. This is how you are punished.”

“But Marie said--”

“It doesn’t matter what she said. What matters is what she did. She proved that you were manipulable.”

~

It seemed like an eternity before Angel heard Hammer start to manipulate the lock on the kitchen door. The Gods only knew what kind of things he had in tow from that garage. Even being in the house was a huge gamble for Angel, and just in case, she began to attempt the formulation of an escape plan. She changed her mind about the front-line confrontation and instead got down low to the floor and crawled around the corner, down the hallway, and far back into the room she shared with Emi. She locked the door and pushed the dresser in front of it, guaranteeing herself some time. She took her phone from her pocket and called Emi.

Emi drove. She turned her stereo on and let the music thud in her ears. The road was nigh-on empty, everyone was at work or school, so her tears brought risk only to herself as she struggled to keep her vision clear. A song by Devin Townsend began to play. It was one of Angel’s favorites.

[ _ **I-- I wonder**_

_**Why** _

_**I wonder** _

_**Why** _

_**I’ve come undone…** _

_**I’ve come undone!]** _

She let out a sob and grabbed for a tissue, dabbing at her eyes.

[ _ **Okay, I know, I missed it,**_

_**The point, I mean, I missed it.** _

_**(So could I know)** _

_**And if I could (could change it)** _

_**Good god I would!** _

_**Stay with me, lord (play with me)**_ ]

Finally her phone rang via the hands-free and she pulled the car over to the shoulder, burning a bit of rubber in the process. “Hello? Oh god, Angel please let that be you!”

“Please don’t worry, baby. Everything will be okay. I have a plan, just hang on for me. I want you to go to the coastline and find a safe place to stay. Text me when you get there and tell me where to go- I’ll meet you when I can get out of this house. Hammer was picking the lock to the kitchen door, anytime now he’ll be inside… I’m ready for him.”

[ _ **Now I’ve seen the way it’s headed,**_

_**Down and down, the truth descended,** _

_**Have it here and without worry--**_ ]

“Angel, don’t fight him, just get out of there, you don’t know...” She broke off, unable to control her crying. She swallowed it some and tried to continue. “You don’t know what he can do. I do know and that’s why he’s after me, please just get out of there!”

Tears stung Angel’s eyes now, reality was sinking in beyond the adrenaline.

[ _ **Baby, please, there is no hurry, I’m fine!**_ ]

“I love you, Emily.” She could hear the heels of Hammer’s expensive dress shoes clicking on the floor.

“Angel!” Emi wept angrily as she saw the disconnect happen on the dashboard screen. “Nnno! No!” She shook the wheel and slammed her hand against the dash hard enough to make the screen flicker. Suddenly, she felt concrete resolution and turned the car around, driving over the grassy median to get back to her home, back to her partner. Hammer was Emi’s responsibility. Her tears soon dried and she found herself parked a mile from her drive, sifting through her trunk for her pry bar. Angel had always insisted that she be prepared for the eventuality of a flat tire, and that sometimes tire irons weren’t effective enough, so there sat the 2-foot-long pry bar, slightly rusty in spots but at the same time assertive.

She got back in her car and silently traversed the mile. She parked in her neighbor’s drive (luckily they were on vacation or there would be questions needing answered, surely), and cut across the backyard with her implement in tow.

Inside the house, Hammer’s game play continued. Angel could hear him breathing by the door. Was he trying to taste her in the air like a snake? Angel did not like to be trapped. Every muscle, smooth and striated alike in her body nagged for her to make a move, but luckily brain is in charge and refused. The time was not right. As every single Sensei she has ever had would impress upon her, the trick would most often be in the timing. Angel could hear feet padding through the grass in the backyard. Her hearing had always been sharp as a child; later in life, meditation and the martial arts had only made more acute her comprehension of the sounds around her, even the soft ones.

There was a good chance that Emi would be caught. She trembled so hard that it made her teeth chatter. There was no time to breathe this down, the adrenaline coursing through her took forceful precedence and this resulted in a fine mist of sweat forming and gathering at her forehead. It rolled in fat droplets down into her eyes, stinging them, making her liner run. She crouched down and crawled toward her bedroom window. She could see the back of Angel’s head, meaning Angel was sitting against the wall she was approaching.

She couldn’t let Angel know that she was near.

~

“If there is anything I can’t be, it’s manipulated.” Dark rebuffed.

“Look at you, lying to yourself. For what? To buy some time?” Anti pressed. He took a few steps closer. “To protect your pride?”

“Pride?” Dark repeated. “Really? You think that’s all this is about, is PRIDE?!” He lunged at Anti, but found himself stuck to the spot. Something moving clutched at his ankles and to his horror he found upon looking down that they were hands and arms that sprung from the hard ground at varying heights like parasitic plants.

“Uh-uh.” Anti said.

“More cheap parlor tricks, then?” Dark crouched down and ripped one of the hands from the ground by its venous, tendonous roots. It shrieked and tried to scratch at him as he threw it across the room. It hit the rocky wall and then the ground with a dense thud and scrambled away. The others sank back down and he stepped away from his spot, toward his nemesis. “Mere slight-of-hand.”

“This is no illusion.” Anti reminded Dark. He smiled as he felt Marie’s hand slide up his arm and come to rest on his shoulder. He payed no mind to the blood pooling on his shirt and dripping down his side.

As doubt crept slowly into Dark’s mind, Mark began to stir behind the glass.

~


	4. Come Undone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I can't ever keep from falling apart--   
> at the seams.  
> Cannot believe you're taking my heart--   
> to pieces...

Emi watched carefully though most of what she could see was ceiling, an upper corner of the bedroom door and Angel’s hair. She trembled from the ungodly amounts of adrenaline coursing through her veins.

From a young age, Emi was a bright, bubbly, and energetic little thing. Something had been instilled in her by nature that allowed her to combat any negative feelings with just the opposite. She clung to this ability, cultivated it, and it became her first line of defense when dealing with bullies, anger, and eventually, unfortunately, hatred.

There was a reason why love could heal and had the power to drive the mind to its limits. There was a reason why people shied from it, and hurtled toward it, and cursed its very existence. Poems have been written. Legends have been told, and songs sung, and it is because concretely, ultimately, love is the strongest (and sadly most easily corruptible) superpower that ordinary man has ever held in its very mortal hands. Emi knew how to use this power and refused to ever use it incorrectly, so with this knowledge, she sat with her back against the outside of their little house and encouraged an amazing memory.

It was kind of a dark time for Emi when she was coming into the realization of who she truly was and what her heart needed. As it happens for many, the convictions of others cast conflict into what should be such a simple understanding. Naturally these others would try everything in their power to convince her that all the loneliness and confusion she had waded through was merely a hormonal figment of her imagination, or an indoctrination via some sick pop-culture conspiracy. These people always called this strength and would let her and others like her know that it must be that she was weak or otherwise she would most certainly be just like them in every way.

She had even nearly been soldered into her place via traumatizing means and it was then that her foot hit the ground with such force that she was never to be questioned again.

This happened the day that she made the decision to come out and join her brothers and sisters in her local Pride march. It was a bright and sunny day and she was terrified of everything around her, but even coated in a sheen of sweat she forced her way forward. Much to her chagrin someone from the opposing team, that is, the tiny group of protesters with their brightly colored signs peppered with vile and shocking hate, knew her and pointed her out. Before she could put any valuable distance between herself and them, she felt hands grasping at her clothing to pull her in. They physically sucked her in and surrounded her.

Their ‘prayer’ was as forceful and vile as their signage. They wept to their lord and pressed their hands against her, some even hitting her, holding her to the ground in their midst and no matter how she cried, no matter how she screamed they would not let go. It was then that someone barreled through them and reached for her hand. She grasped the person’s outstretched hand and pushed as the hand pulled and soon she was breathing crisp, fresh air, trembling against the personification of her wildest dreams. She looked up and into two piercing dark blue eyes.

“Are you okay?” She asked Emi. Her face was blank and serious, but Emi could feel this person’s heart thudding in their chest and the warmth of their body, the electrical connection between them practically sending sparks into the atmosphere around them. They continued moving, as these zealots were not ones to give up so easily, and soon they dissolved together into the large mass of people celebrating love.

When they were far enough away, the person leaned in slightly so she could hear: “I’m Angel.”

It was all Emi could take and she leaned in, pressing her lips against Angel’s. She shook from head to toe and she clung to Angel’s clothing. Angel braced her and returned the kiss, breathing Emi in. After what seemed like an eternity, Emi pulled away. “I’m Emily...” She replied, dazed. The realization of what she had always needed and what she had always begged the universe for had come to jubilant fruition and she would be absolutely damned if she wasn’t going to take the chance that lingered on her lips.

Emi’s heart pounded so hard before, but suddenly she felt a cool breeze blow over. She came back into herself and recognized the blades of grass under her bare heels. She had kicked her shoes off earlier to achieve what she had hoped was a more quiet approach. She tipped her head back to see if Angel was still in her view, but realized her mistake only too late as her head hit the siding with a dull thump. “Ohh shit...” She whined quietly.

Hammer had gotten in during Emi’s meditation. She had been so lost in this magnificent memory that she didn’t hear Hammer kick the door open and consequently move the dresser violently out of his way. She couldn’t hear the man and Angel having a heated conversation behind her. Hammer had his gun at the ready but when he heard the hollow thud, he barreled toward the window, heaving Angel out of the way with a sweep of his huge arm. He opened it hard enough to shatter the panes of glass, ripped through the screen and clutched at a handful of Emi’s plentiful hair, dragging her into a standing position and then into the room via the window.

She screamed and kicked as she was dragged backward, trying her best to hold the pry bar close to her body, and when she felt she had her chance, she closed her eyes and struck backward over her shoulder hearing and feeling it connect, the unmistakable sound of metal against bone rang in her ears. Hammer dropped her. He cried out and stumbled backward. He hadn’t felt such pain in a long time. It was true what was said about the brain not feeling pain, but it wasn’t his head that hurt, it was the kinetic resonance of the pry bar’s connection with his skull that radiated fiery bolts of agony down his neck and upper back.

She took her chance and helped Angel the rest of the way up and made their way around him as he tried and failed not to crumble into a heap on the floor. He lashed out and grasped at Emi’s ankle on her way by, causing her to topple, but Angel had her by the waist and with a heavy foot, stomped at Hammer’s elbow until his hand would not work to grip. They ran through the house and out to Angel’s car, the only one with remote ignition, and practically got in like the Dukes of Hazzard, peeling out of the drive. They could see Hammer plowing through the living room through the front windows and he took single-handed aim and fired a shot through the glass. The bullet hit the driver’s side door and pierced Angel’s left side at a slight angle, just missing an artery and exiting through the seat, coming to a stop somewhere in the seat framing behind her.

~

Anti could sense Mark’s tenuous consciousness, but of course said nothing to Dark about it. Marie watched Dark as he began to walk in slow but large, methodical circles around them both. He was sizing them both up.

_It is as you were informed before._ She began.

“You shut the _fuck_ up.” he hissed through his bared teeth. “You struck me as useful before… this won’t be a mistake I make twice.” Dark’s eyes were glassy and stared out through thick rings of red and black liner. Anti always found his proclivities amusing, especially the ones that prompted Dark to use cosmetics.

“I wouldn’t talk to her like that if I were you.” Anti chuckled.

“-- _and you!_ ” Dark began. “I will fashion your tongue into a necktie!” He threatened. The circling turned into pacing as Mark’s consciousness opened further up and it triggered Dark to lose his composure further, pixel by precious pixel.

Behind the glass, Mark opened his eyes, let them roll around, and closed them again. He made small movements against the various computer cables, even sweetly setting his head against the top of Jack’s for a moment, stirring very slightly at the sensation of Jack’s chartreuse hair against his cheek. He took in a deep, sleepy breath, and when he made to stretch, alarm bells rang in his head.

“What-the-hell...” Mark mumbled. “Jack...mmmh...wake up, Jack, you’re heavy.” His eyes flew open to the sensation of restricted movement and motionless, cold dead-weight propped up against his body.

Dark lifted his eyes and pointed at Mark’s encasing, shaking. “Do something about this!” He loudly ordered Marie. He reached up and loosened his tie, unbuttoning the top two buttons of his dress shirt. A bead of sweat rolled over his temple and down his cheek. “Why’s it so damn hot in here?”

_When you tipped the first domino, did you ever think that something as vivid as this could take place?_ Marie toyed with Dark. _I think that I could never be entirely convinced that you take consequence into serious consideration._

“Jack, stand up on your own.” Mark said. He started to tug at the cables when he realized that his shirt was soaked in blood where Jack’s head had been laying. From his position he could not see the wound, but the blood was enough on its own. It was cold already and quite… aromatic. It triggered in him a wave of panic and he took to struggling against the cables. Some began to give way from the rocky wall around him just enough for him to shift Jack and he was shocked when the still, silent man fell forward, forcing Mark to maybe not catch him, but lower him safely. There was barely room for them both in this exhibit, and when Jack sank to the floor it was mostly into a sitting position with knees almost to chest. “What the fuck?”

Normally Anti could care less. Jack was as irritating to him as Mark was to Dark, but it made him feel quite disturbed that Jack just gave his one life away to save the life of a person that had rejected him so harshly. Mark and Dark were both expendable, in his opinion. Marie looked at Anti as he watched the truth sink, with difficulty, into Mark.

“No! No!” Mark pulled harder and harder at his restraints. He found that they began to dislodge and turn into ash the more that he tugged. Parenthetically, they were really much more for show than the protective glass was. His heart hummed inside his chest wall as he could finally move and crouched as best he could, tilting Jack’s head back. This would be the first he saw of the deep, unforgiving bullet wound. “No! What-- this isn’t supposed to happen!” He patted Jack’s cheek with his hand and when his fingertips met with Jack’s icy grey skin, the rest of the pieces dropped bluntly into place.

He began to come undone and tearfully object, pounding his fists against the glass, throwing himself against the glass. He didn’t have his glasses with him and didn’t notice the aforementioned minuscule crack in the center of the pane. He didn't know either that it had started to feather around the edges and spider out more and more with every blunt strike.

"I  _can't_ be trapped inside again... Look, he's acting like a lunatic without my influence!"

Mark was sustaining little cuts all over his upper body, his knuckles were done for and his shoulders were next. Blood smeared the inner surface of the glass in spots. It was the now audible crackling of the glass, the way it spit little tiny fragments out the other side that kept Mark motivated to continue though his body screamed with pain. 


	5. Vinyl

Dark dared to near the glass. He pressed his hands against it to see if it had any give. He then began pressing his body weight into his forearms, thinking that like a keystone in an arch, this could equalize the pressure from the other side and keep the glass from shattering.

 _You stay in. You stay_ _cornered_. He thought, trying to grab unsettling eye contact with Mark whenever he could.

Glass fragments pelted his forehead and cheeks, the vibration pulsing through the pane from Mark’s barrage was slowly allowing the glass to chew up Dark’s fingertips and palms, but physical pain seemed to be one of the things he didn’t acknowledge. His neurotic behavior was purely mental. Theories about neurosis abound; one in specific noted an opinion that neurotic behavior stemmed from an overactive nervous system. Going from this, we could imagine that Dark’s brain was constantly fully lit up, causing him to actually need the control that being ‘put away’ as he would call it, would provide him.

This would always translate within him to neglect. To a malicious encasement within the confines of a Jungian nightmare.

“Mark….” Dark said softly at first. Having gone unacknowledged, he slammed his bloody palm against the glass and tried again: “MARK!”

Mark stopped dead, his name reverberating in upsetting ways in his tiny hole in the wall. The glass was so thick, all he could think was that it was no natural occurrence that Dark had thrown his voice so hard. He seemed to be having difficulty looking Dark in the eyes, kind of like the difficulty some have with maintaining direct and continuous eye contact with one’s own reflection in the mirror.

“You’re gonna rot in here.” Dark toyed. “The pressure you put on your little green-haired toy-- how interesting that he would work so diligently for Hell, yet give up his life in the blink of an eye for your sins. And look at the festering piece of shit he left behind.” He gestured toward Anti. Anti flipped Dark the bird.

“That’s not fair...” Mark replied. “That’s-- that’s not fucking fair!! Don’t you compare this stubborn, trash-mouthed Irishman to Christ! You want to talk about _me_ putting pressure on him?!”

Dark grinned wickedly. He could see Mark trembling. “Stubborn? Trash-mouthed? You mean to tell me that you don’t hold him in such high esteem?”

“No one person should be pushed that hard, or put on a pedestal that high, and YOU did the pushing because YOU were afraid to be loved! Not me. Not _ever_ me.”

~

Angel drove on as Emi scrambled into the back seat so she could reach between the gap in the seat and the door and press her sweater against the bullet wound in her beloved’s side. The exit wound had somehow cauterized and wasn’t bleeding nearly as much as the entry wound. Angel jumped a little as a real and unforgiving burn began to ease its way from the inside out of the wound.

“I’m so sorry, baby… shit… why don’t you let me drive?” Emi offered.

“Just keep doing what you’re doing right now. I can pull through.” Angel replied calmly. She was going through a mantra in her mind. Repeating it word for word kept her at ease and focused on the task at hand which was to seek medical help… and then it happened.

The long studied, long used mantra began to scramble itself inside her head. She stopped, took a breath, and started again thinking that it was just a bit of shock settling in, but this was not the truth. The words would not fit together, no. Instead they twisted themselves into something evil. She frowned deeply and tried to assert the words back into the correct order.

“Babe, you don’t look so good. Gimme the wheel.” Emi insisted. Angel pulled over and got out of the car with great difficulty, but something kept her from going around to the other side. She walked over to the back of the car and vomited in the street. Upon righting herself, she could see Hammer in the distance, taking as always his sweet time getting to them. His warpath was strangely casual, but it was a warpath nonetheless.

Emi’s breath caught in her throat when Angel stood up straight and she saw that the blue eyes she had fallen so deeply in love with had gone as black as Jack’s. The sclera around them were still stark white, but there was no love left in those lifeless ebony irises. “Angel, what’s the matter?” Emi kept feeling like she was continuously struggling to swallow back a scream.

They both watched as Hammer pulled his gun from his holster, carrying it out in the open on his suburban stroll. Angel would not, perhaps could not answer.

Icy fear crept through her veins as Angel’s fingertips stroked the back of her neck. This was a stranger. This didn’t feel like love… and the suspicion would be confirmed as Hammer drew nearer and Angel’s fingers crept downward and took up a handful of her blouse, holding her in her place. “Angel what are you doing?!” She squealed. “You’re scaring me!” Tears dripped down Emi’s cheeks as she tried to get away. She felt betrayed and lost.

“Emily, we had such a great rapport at work. Look-” Hammer began. “It will be over before you know it.” The meaningless consolation disturbed Emi and she was desperate for anything that could tip the scales in her favor somehow. “Besides, these bullets aren’t just any old bullets,” He continued, loading the barrel, “these are special and rare. They sway peoples opinions and loyalties and not through the promise of pain.” The bullets were imbued with the nasty ability to wrest complete mental and physical control of the body of whomever they passed through.

She struggled once more to get away from Angel and felt only more strength going into holding her tighter against her will. Gnashing her teeth, she took the one last avenue she had, as she refused to take this all lying down. “Baby… I’m sorry. I love you...” She said as she turned abruptly around just enough to stick her finger in Angel’s wound. Angel yelped and dropped like a ton of bricks but before Emi could run, Hammer had already wrapped a hefty, fully healed arm around her waist, pulling her in.

She gagged on the smell of his cologne and felt violated by the sensation of his musculature up against her back. Her body stiffened as he felt the mouth of the barrel of the gun gliding slowly up her side, up her arm, over her collarbones. Its icy metallic touch felt its way along her jawline and without further delay, Hammer jammed it into the soft spot under her chin.

~

Marie knew it was time for this to end. Her involvement was to be brief, but brevity would be set upon a back burner once something disturbing came back to her.

On the outside, Mark and Dark appeared to be in their early-late twenties, but Marie has known of the existence of Dark for so, so much longer. Mark was not the original, but was brought into the world a peaceful, loving bundle of doe-eyed joy whose positive energies would be sufficient to once more encapsulate all the horrible things that Dark was made of. Dark was ancient. He was made when the cosmos was merely specks of dust floating in nothingness, hoping to find other specks.

As it had always been suspected, Dark was not a schism in Mark’s normally happy and placid behavior, instead he was a prisoner in a moving, walking, talking penitentiary. It was in the mid 1970’s when Marie and Dark were destined to meet. From earlier conversation, she had discussed her role in life as a healer. Marie was a lovely blue-eyed nurse in a NICU located in the heart of Chicago. She had set her eyes on a handsome German-Korean-American doctor who had just taken up work in her ward.

She learned that he had recently come home from fighting a fight he had been unfairly sucked into, but admitted openly that because he was a trained medical professional with years under his belt already, that he was immediately made an officer and was therefore allotted some creature comforts that would have been otherwise unheard of. She and this sturdy, sweet man would frequent bars together, though he would usually order coffee for some weird reason. She wasn’t much for alcohol either, but they both loved to dance a little now and again.

They would eventually fall in love, Marie and this doctor. It would happen one day that a moroseness would settle into her love. It was so damn difficult to get a doctor to go and see a doctor. PTSD (long before it would be recognized as such) would soon upturn his bedside manner. She plead with him that his specialty was children, not psychology, and that there was absolutely no shame in seeking help where it was needed. “These babies depend on you.” She would say. It was too much for him to hear. The guilt had welled up inside him and with nowhere for it to go, it turned into thick, caustic cynicism and rage. The Dark took over and like never before he laid his hands on her in the worst ways mere man can do. Once he was through with everything a mortal could do, he upped the ante and began to call up the very things that created Marie as she currently is.

The rage inside devolved into jealousy and narcissism, and he began insisting that she was cheating on him with her career, and then that she was cheating on him with other doctors while she was there. No amount of pleading or tears or time or love made any difference to him anymore. The man she loved so deeply had been eaten alive from the inside out and Dark was now wearing him like an animated flesh suit.

Marie was tortured to death that day. The news would read that the monstrosity she was submitted to was just far too hideous to describe to the public, but the nasty details that were available were definitely subject to discretion.

Dark decided he wanted to see her skin gleam like chrome, so it was to be that he would summon up swaths of vinyl and from there remove her old skin, and tailor her a new skin. He ‘lovingly’ stitched it in down to the muscle so that he could see her in it always. It wouldn't take long after for Dark's need to be filled and dormancy to settle in, lulling him to sleep until he was presented with another strong body, another handsome face.

Marie was forgotten about; discarded just as soon as Dark fell into his slumber. She snapped out of the daze of her memories at the beginning of an odd, familiar sensation. You see, when blood rolls down a person’s skin, the sensation can almost be like a paintbrush delicately tracing downward with a bead of red paint. Contrarily it can be light as air and almost sensationless, but a tear-- the warmth and heaviness of this emotional output is unmistakable. Anti looked upon Marie in surprise.

“You’re crying tears...” He remarked softly.

A short distance from them, Mark began to recede toward the back of his enclosure. He had somehow shared her memory, his empathic nature allowing him to tap easily into her without effort, or want. He swallowed back sobs and did only what he could to try and cultivate his composure, to try and reconcile what he had just seen.

“You _coward_.” Dark spat. Narcissism would strike again and he would decide that Mark was receding in fear from his awe-striking nastiness.

Marie reached up and let the crocodile tear roll onto her vinyl fingertip. The flames gleamed off of it like a diamond. It rolled away and hit the sooty ground with a tiny splat. This was all the time it took for her to be on Dark like white on rice. She threw him viciously to the side and with one mighty swing of her admittedly dainty hand she reduced the glass to rubble. She bowed her head as she stood before Mark. When she finally looked back up, he could see those beautiful blue eyes for just a moment, welling up.

“I am so very sorry.” She said aloud. “It was necessary only for this purpose that I used you the way I did.” Another tear, and another rolled down her cheeks. She reached out her hand and took Mark’s, helping him steady himself as he left the enclosure.

“I saw...”

“I know.” She looked past Mark at Jack. With Mark’s help, they lifted the lifeless man out of the enclosure and set him flat on the ground.


End file.
